m.t THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 187 



and materiality have been constituted, in detail, by- 

 reciprocal adaptation. Both are derived from a wider 

 and higher form of existence. It is there that we must 

 replace them, in order to see them issue forth. 



Such an attempt may appear, at first, more daring 

 than the boldest speculations of metaphysicians. It 

 claims to go further than psychology, further than cos- 

 mology, further than traditional metaphysics; for psy- 

 chology, cosmology and metaphysics take intelligence, 

 in all that is essential to it, as given, instead of, as we now 

 propose, engendering it in its form and in its matter. The 

 enterprise is in reality much more modest, as we are going 

 to show. But let us first say how it differs from others. 



To begin with psychology, we are not to believe that 

 it engenders intelligence when it follows the progressive 

 development of it through the animal series. Comparative 

 psychology teaches us that the more an animal is intelligent, 

 the more it tends to reflect on the actions by which it 

 makes use of" things, and thus to approximate to man. 

 But its actions have already by themselves adopted the 

 principal lines of human action; they have made out the 

 same general directions in the material world as we have; 

 they depend upon the same objects bound together by 

 the same relations; so that animal intelligence, although 

 it does not form concepts properly so called, already moves 

 in a conceptual atmosphere. Absorbed at every instant 

 by the actions it performs and the attitudes it must adopt, 

 drawn outward by them and so externalized in relation 

 to itself, it no doubt plays rather than thinks its ideas; 

 this play none the less already corresponds, in the main, 

 to the general plan of human intelligence. 1 To explain 

 the intelligence of man by that of the animal consists 



1 We have developed this point in Mature et memoire, chaps, ii. and 

 iii., notably pp. 78-80 and 169-186. 



